Users' IT quality certification

Due to the rapid development of information technologies, the public
agencies whose role it is to watch over quality performance - journalists,
researchers, standards organisations, regulators  have difficulties to reach
consensus about quality deficiencies and to validate solutions to common
problems in IT software.

Context:

Popular movements that work systematically on many levels to strengthen members
in their role as customers and end-users of IT tools and services.

The TCO Labels are today tucked to more than 240 million Display units, representing more than half of the global market for display units. It was initiated by the white collar workers trade union central, TCO, and is regarded as one of the most important Swedish IT innovations during the 1990's.

UsersAwards software certification is a direct follow-up of the successful TCO initiative. It is the most research intensive activity of the Users' IT quality network. The quality criteria that underpin the certification are based on a long-term research effort and by an ongoing dialogue between researchers, service providers, and user panels throughout universities, industry and users networks.

Service providers that register a particular service for certification has to go through two hearings with certification staff and get their service scrutinized at three independent sites of use through a standardized interview and questionnaire procedure.

While winning the User's IT Prize gives publicity, the Users' certification gives a thorough quality documentation of how satisfied users actually use the certified service. For service providers who want to retain their customers, and thereby gain new ones, this kind of "open source" documentation of users' satisfaction is hard to beat.

Create or support initiatives in which user organisations such as trade unions, professional associations, consumer organisations work together with research organisations in order to label software products or services on grounds of publicly declared measurements open for scientific scrutiny and media inspection.